


And Pay For It

by Ika (Dolores_Crane)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M, Gen, No Spoilers, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolores_Crane/pseuds/Ika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake and Avon meet as teenagers in a Space Command boot camp. Blakecentric story, tracing Blake's political awakening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Pay For It

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure that Blake and Avon met for the first time on the London, which makes this, strictly speaking, an AU - so I felt able to assign characters' ages according to the requirements of the story.
> 
> Contains an original character, Siv Holland, who shows up in some of my other stories too.
> 
> Teen-rated for swearing and violence (though probably less violent than the average canon episode).

_Some people walk on water  
Some people walk on broken glass  
Some just walk round and round in their dreams  
Some just keep falling down_

\- Laurie Anderson, 'Ramon'

WEEK ONE

"Federation officers, Cadet Holland, are expected to hold their liquor like gentlemen."

"Yes, sir," agreed Siv, peaceably.

"And you know this would be a particularly unfortunate time for your record to reflect this - incident."

Siv shifted her gaze a little to the left. The golden name in the fifth line of the Benefactors list (MARJA HOLLAND) looked back at her comfortingly over the Colonel's shoulder.

"Accordingly, this vac you will be remaining at the Academy in order to take responsibility for a group of civilian children on reparative service."

"Yes, sir," Siv agreed cheerfully.

Then she replayed what he'd said in her mind and her head whipped round to stare him in the eye.

Colonel Berjeral beamed at her. What would have been an unremarkable enough smile on a leaner man rippled through the entire topography of his face in a slightly repulsive fashion.

"I have already let Marja know that your birthday celebrations will have to be rescheduled," he added. "Dismissed, Cadet."

 _Bastard_.

*****

Roj shook his head. Dayvid sighed and brought the comm, stretched out towards his brother, back to his own mouth.

"Not yet, Mum, sorry. I'll talk to him."

"There's no _not yet_ about it," Roj said, over Dayvid flapping his hand keep-quiet. "It's _no_."

"What was that? Roj was - Yes. All right. Bye." Dayvid put the comm down.

"You're cutting off your nose to spite your face, you know," he said, looking across the table at Roj. He was leaning back a little, ostentatiously calm, as if his body language could hold Roj in place long enough to listen to what he had to say aloud.

"No," said Roj, caustically. "I'm taking what I want. And paying for it."

Dayvid rolled his eyes, recognizing their father's favourite saying.

"All right, Roj. I know he's a dreadful old sod and she's a shocking idiot, but they're trying to do you a favour. And Heaven knows they don't owe you one," he added.

"They don't owe me anything. That's the whole point. Do you want a cup of tea?"

"I despair of you, Roj. Are you really going to go through with this?"

Roj looked at him balefully, with all the contempt a fifteen-year-old boy could muster. "It's not up to me, is it? It's not like I booked myself in to do reparative service."

"You could get out of it."

"No, _I_ couldn't."

"Heaven spare me," Dayvid muttered, putting a fist into his hair and tugging at it. He glared at his little brother; anger jumped from one pair of eyes to another, from one tight-set mouth to another, and their usually unalike faces became mirrors. "Mum and Pa could get you out of it, then."

"Vered and Tolliver, you mean. They're not my legal parents," said Roj, going back to spooning tea into a pot. "And _you_ can't get me out of bugger-all, can you?"

"Don't swear. Look, they're willing to overlook all that business. Can't you just take their help?"

Roj looked up, smiling.

"What's it cost?"

********

"Stop being disgusting," said Siv absent-mindedly, pulling Deeta's hand out of her trousers. They were sprawled somewhat rumpledly on her bed. A stripe of light from the gap between the curtains was illuminating half of Siv's face and a little patch of skin at Deeta's waist where his shirt was untucked from his trousers and half-undone.

Deeta sighed loudly, but removed his hand good-naturedly enough; he rolled half-over and started nuzzling Siv's neck instead, saying something muffled into it.

"What?"

"I just thought you might want something to remember me by." His hand crept back towards her waistband. "Seeing as we won't see each other for three months."

"Don't go _on_ about it," said Siv, moving Deeta's hand. "Have you heard, that fucking Thania's having a party on my coming-of-age now?"

" _Thania_ ," said Deeta with infinite scorn. "It's not even worth noticing, babe. No-one's going."

"I know _that_. It's just cheeky, that's all. I mean - dyouknow what I mean, she's barely even in my set."

"Well, you can deal with her next term," said Deeta, bored. "Mock her haircut or whatever it is you girls do to each other."

"Deeta, you're such a wanker." Siv pushed him entirely off her and rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed, her back to him. "I don't even know why I'm going out with you."

"Prestige," said Deeta and stretched. "We're an unbeatable alliance."

" _I'm_ an unbeatable alliance. You're a wanker." There was a brief pause, then she added: "I can't believe Berjeral would do this to me. I always thought he was all right."

"He is all right," said Deeta.

"Wanker," said Siv briefly.

"No, really. I reckon he's got his reasons."

"Like what? Ruining my life?"

"Well, _I_ don't know. But he's a deep one, the Head Man, and he's never let me down yet." He scooted over to Siv, put his arms around her and pulled her comfortingly back against his chest. "Chin up, babe. I'd trust the Man. He knows what he's doing."

"Hmph," said Siv, unconvinced. "Fucksake, Deeta," she added, "have you got a stiffie?"

"Yep."

"Don't you _ever_ think about anything else?"

"Not when I'm around you, babe."

"Don't be so wet." But she turned round in his arms to kiss him and let him pull her back down onto the bed.

A few interestingly tussly and increasingly flushed minutes later, just when Deeta's hand had managed to remain inside Siv's trousers for over thirty seconds without rebuff, a voice outside piped: "Deeta?"

Deeta swore, with great feeling, and sat up, running his hands through his hair (without notable success).

" _What_ , you little bastard?"

"Don't swear at me." A curly little head popped round the door, about four feet up, staring with frank interest at Deeta's and Siv's dishevelment.

"Fuck _off_ , Del!" said Siv. "Deeta, your brother's a pervert."

"Mum and Dad say you have to come now," Del announced. "They've been waiting an hour and your trunk's all packed. They say they want to say goodbye to Siv too."

"You call me Holland, you little squirt," said Siv, glaring at him.

"I don't have to," said Del bravely. "You've been expelled."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," muttered Deeta. "She hasn't been expelled, and seeing as she's probably going to be Head Girl next term, you'd better get into the habit of being a bit more polite, all right? Go and tell Mum and Dad we'll be there in a minute."

Del disappeared. Deeta turned to Siv. "Ready?"

Siv sighed and rolled off the bed. "I'll just brush my hair. I should show my face before everyone leaves, anyway."

*****************

Roj finished packing and took his bag three paces from his bedroom to the kitchen, where he made himself a cup of tea and sat at the table, watching the clock. He was tallish for his age, and his bones had just started to sketch in a certain solidity at his shoulders and ribs, which hovered there waiting for him to grow into it. As it was, he looked a bit ridiculous bisected by the table-top, heavy top half overbalancing the long, still-skinny legs.

He didn't drink his tea. He watched the clock. His hands were wrapped round the mug, for warmth.

Precisely ten minutes before Dayvid was due in from work, he left the unit. He walked through the corridors to the tram stop at _Grain_ and caught a tram in the opposite direction to the throng coming off midshift. There were seats free at first, but he stood up; he stayed standing all the way to _Prosper_ , slouching his weight off one hip, looking at the vis, and radiating such a fierce silence that when the carriage filled up the space around him stayed empty.

**************

The bus came to a halt outside the main barracks and the reparas came out, one by one. Siv, who was feeling gloomy because everyone had gone home except her and because she had spent the last hour standing up straight and watching a cloud of dust grow very gradually larger and larger as the bus approached, perked up considerably. There were ten of them. Notably: a skinny white kid with a my-mother-cuts-my-hair haircut, who took two stumbling paces out of the bus, stared around at the open space (Theseus-II was a very flat planet), went whiter, staggered, and fell to his knees; a fatter, sandy, freckly boy, who was vomiting; a girl with hair that stuck out further than her shoulders and was pink, and an unfortunately lanky boy with shiny, neat, black hair, who were both crying; and, at the other end of the spectrum, after a bunch of boring kids who were just staring or shaking - only one other girl, Siv noticed - a curly-haired boy who planted his feet, took a cool look around, and expanded.

"Gentlemen," said Siv. Faces turned towards her with anything from what-the-fuck to will-she-get-me-out-of-here? to contempt.

"Welcome to the Outside." She paused just long enough for one of them to pluck up the courage to begin asking a question - the non-pink-haired girl, possibly under the misapprehension that Siv was just waiting for an excuse to sit down with her so they could do each other's nails and talk about boys - then roared: " _Shut_ thefuckup!"

The girl shut the fuck up. Siv grinned briefly to herself, took a deep breath, and launched into the harangue she'd spent the last lonely, boyfriendless week compiling from the repara regulations and the last tedious, dusty hour polishing. It relieved her feelings considerably, and by the end of it the kids were satisfactorily pale and wobbly and standing in line in order of height. Curly was One. Neat black was Four. Mother-cut was Seven. Pink was Eight (the other girl was Nine). Sandy was Ten.

"Right," she said finally, with a glare round to make sure they were all watching. She pushed the button on her handcomm and went on while she was waiting: "That's it for now. Remember, you call me Sir, you call each other by your number: I don't want to hear any civilian names inside this base. If you fuck up, you _will_ be sorry."

"Reporting for duty, Sir." The mutoid was there, suddenly: they moved so silently they still gave _her_ the creeps from time to time, so she let the kids off the small gasps  & flinches they made.

"Thanks. Right, you lot, 109 here is going to take you off to strip and shower. It will escort you to your barracks, where you will unpack and get yourselves ready for your first set of drill, which will take place before dinner today. Get out of my sight."

She watched them - trotting to keep up with the mutoid - till they'd gone into the shower block, then shook her head in disbelief at the flagrant impossibility of training these kids into anything remotely approaching discipline or self-respect, and started trudging back to her dorm.

****************

"Oh!"

Stripped, showered, processed and dressed in regulation-drabs, the reparas had - at last - been left on their own in the barracks. The moment the mutoid had left, something in them had been released: it was palpable in the air.

Blake was folding clothes according to the regulations nailed to the set of shelves by his bunk, narrowing his focus right down until his field of vision was reduced to the monochrome surface of each garment, passing from case to shelf through the machine-sequence of his hands. He was listening; it was something Ushton had taught him ( _Sight plays tricks on you, boy. Sound's real. Listen first_ ). Ten's voice was strong enough now ("Look what you're doing, you fucking... _malco_ "), but that first sound had been more than a gasp, shriller; almost a little scream.

Seven's voice in response was entirely colourless. "I'm sorry. I'm a little clumsy."

Further away, other conversations and challenges, shouts and curses: some serious, some just taking up space, celebrating the absence of the mutoid. At the very furthest end someone - Four, Blake guessed, a skinny boy who'd sat opposite him on the bus - was weeping, a low, continuous noise. And closer, suddenly, a girl's voice, speaking to him:

"Blake! Roj! I don't believe it! What are you doing here?"

Blake glanced up, annoyed at the break in his focus. The girl with the pink hair was perched on the edge of his bunk.

"I haven't seen you since you moved schools and there was all that fuss. Mummy says Vered and Tolliver won't even _mention_ you now. We all thought it was brilliant. Is it true you spent a year off-world? How are you? I didn't know you were going to be here. Isn't it _fucking_ tedious? I didn't even _do_ anything. Well, much. I can't believe Mummy wouldn't get me out of it. She's such a bitch."

"That's not a nice thing to say about your mother, Szara," said Blake. The other boys in his section had paused to watch. Ten's eyes and pugnacious chin pointed at Blake now, though the rest of his body was still squared off opposite Seven. Blake watched for a second to make sure Ten wasn't going to direct the rest of his hostility towards him as well, then went back to folding clothes and listening.

"You're one to talk! At least she still _is_ my mother, I didn't _divorce_ her! So what did you _do_ , Roj? You can tell me."

Blake didn't look at her but the quick-flash vision of her face, cocked at a confidential angle, her greedy eyes, shook him out of his concentration and his heart started beating so loudly in his ears that his soundscape quaked and buckled. _I hate her. I hate them._

"Yes," Five joined in, cooing, "what did you _do_ , Rojjy? Is Mummy _terribly_ disappointed in you?"

Several voices then, overlapping chorusing: "What did you do?" Not Szara's, though; not Four's; not Seven's. Blake looked up: Ten had turned his whole body toward Blake's cot, and Seven had taken the opportunity to drift into a corner. He was leaning against a wall, staring into space with an oddly intent look on his face, and twitching a foot rhythmically.

 _Not Five_ , Blake decided. _Five's just trying it on. Waste of a fight._

"I read a book," he said shortly, turning towards Ten. "Ever tried it?"

Staring into Ten's face, Blake could predict from it everything that would happen next. The jeers from the others sounded half-hearted, and soon faded out.

"Once," said Ten, when he had silence. "It was called _Don't Push Your Luck, Faggot_."

Blake grinned involuntarily and quickly. "Shame you didn't learn anything from it."

The fight was short and sharp. Ten accepted his defeat pragmatically and Blake left it as soon as he had knocked the other boy down, walked away, didn't rub his victory in. Didn't push his luck. But he was close to shaking with all that was left in him of the need to keep going, to keep hitting Ten until - until there was nothing left of him. He walked past the little knot of kids helping Ten up, past Szara, who was apparently trying to congratulate him; walked, breathing deeply, until he got to the quiet at far end of the barracks.

The almost-quiet. Four - it was him, the kid from the bus - was still crying.

"Hey." Four paid no attention.

"Hey," said Blake again, gently. "What's your name?"

The other boy looked up at him, visibly scared, visibly hopeful, making a visible effort to get his breathing under control. "We're not supposed to use names," he said, sniffing.

"I'm Blake," said Blake, offering his hand.

"Pakuan," the other boy said, smiling, a little quaver in his voice making it sound like a question. They shook hands.

Talking to Pakuan was easy enough and concentrating on the conversation calmed Blake down quickly. When his anger had settled to the bone-itch that never quite left him, he got up to go. As an afterthought, he punched Pakuan in the shoulder in a chin-up sort of way, and smiled at him when he looked up. "You'll be all right, you know."

"You think so?" The look in Pakuan's eyes changed from wistful to hopeful.

"Yeah," said Blake (thinking, incredulously, _I don't fucking know, do I_?), and Pakuan suddenly grinned, his face opening for the first time since Blake had sat down.

"Thanks."

 _Christ_ , thought Blake, shaking his head in amazement as he walked back to his bunk, _people are idiots._

****************

"Marka!" squealed Siv, and "Siv!" squealed Marka, and a brief flurry of hugging-and-punching later the two were sprawled, one on each of the narrow beds in Siv's bedroom, sharing frubits from Marka's bag.

"What are you _doing_ here?" asked Siv. "You _never_ get into trouble. What did you _do_?"

Marka rolled her eyes. "Please. It's a special-credit job." She glanced at Siv, and added: "That's the opposite of trouble."

"Sounds like trouble to me. Or doesn't _special credit_ means _extra work_?"

"Well," Marka said patiently, "the extra work is how you get the special credit. But then" - she popped a frubit into her mouth and ate it before continuing - "I can be fast-tracked off this horrible planet and into an assignment."

Siv's mouth fell open. "An _assignment_? Really? Don't you have another year to go?"

"If I worked at the pace you regulars do, I would." Marka looked at Siv, who was tipping her head right back so she could drop frubits straight down her throat into her stomach, and added: "If I worked at the pace _you_ do, specifically, I'd have about _five_ years to go."

"Sarky," said Siv indistinctly. She swallowed, tipped her head forward again, and bounced into a cross-legged posture on the bed, looking beadily at Marka. "So are Central Security a bit pushed for recruits this year? I'm really jealous, you cow. An assignment..."

"Hardly. I'm being fast-tracked, like I said. A couple of the older ones aren't best pleased about it, either: they think they should get preferred just because they've been stagnating in training for so many years. Personally I wouldn't like to see them trusted with anything more taxing than waving a laser probe at first-time dissidents on a frontier world."

"Please," said Siv and shuddered. "Spare me the details."

"Oh, don't be so high-and-mighty. You're here to put the frighteners on a bunch of kids."

"Shit!" Siv jumped off the bed. "I've left them in the fucking barracks! And Marka," she added over her shoulder on the way out of the door, "that's completely different."

************

"Men!" Siv shouted, and enjoyed the magnetized-filing jump into straight lines that her voice made in their bodies, in the pattern of them in the long room. Seven, she noticed - almost subliminally: she was somehow absorbing the adrenaline in the room through her skin and her brain was sizzling with it, working like a parallel-fifteen mutoid at optimal efficiency - was the slowest by some way, as if he were imitating the others. Ten and Five were the fastest. The three to watch, probably.

"By your cots! At the double!"

She worked her way round the room, assigning punishments randomly ("Three! Call this folded? Well?") and compiling a rough scale of the kids from _troublemaker_ (Five) to _fragile_ (Four), and finished off - as she'd planned since she'd scanned the barrack AV logs on the way over - with One.

She stared malevolently at the neat corners on his neatly-made bunk, silently fingered the neatly-folded clothes on his shelves.

"Very pretty," she said after a few seconds. "Think you know it all, do you, One?"

"No, sir."

"No, sir. Good thing too. You'll be on punishment detail with the others after dinner." She waited a while. He didn't say anything. Smart kid.

"Don't you want to know why?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why don't you ask, One?"

"Why am I on punishment detail, sir?"

"Thought you could get away with fighting, One?" Siv reached out and ruffled Ten's hair. "And this little one, as well, you big bully! He must be a foot shorter than you!"

Ten went gratifyingly red, and Siv smiled to herself. Maybe this month wouldn't be too bad.

*************

The four of them - Blake, Szara, Margalo (Three) and Mandt (Five) - stumbled into the silent barracks at around midnight. They went to their separate bunks without speaking to each other; the four hours they'd spent on punishment detail together had exhausted anything they could have said, as well as their energy to say it.

Blake sat on his bunk, leaned forwards and contemplated his boots, hoping he could summon the energy to take them off.

"Blake?"

It was Ten, whispering from the next bunk.

"What, Ten?"

"Barrat."

"What, Barrat?"

"What was it like?"

"Nothing," said Blake, "it was nothing," and that was the truth. Physical exhaustion, low-grade humiliation, never being out of sight of the fucking cameras: nothing, nothing at all. He could do it, and that was almost a disappointment.

He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, feeling the small, uncontrollable quiver of his muscles relaxing.

 _I can do this,_ he thought, _but that doesn't mean anything. I have to make sure I do it, I do it properly, but I never, I don't ever, I never feel_ proud _of myself for it. Because it's nothing._

WEEK TWO

The middle of the night; it was dark, and it was quiet. Quieter than it ever got in the Domes; maybe not, though, because the wind was blowing and there were odd, animal noises coming from far off. Quiet in a different way, then: a bigger quiet. Blake breathed it in along with the odd, damp, organic-rotting air. An acquired taste, maybe, but he'd acquired it: last year on Exbar. Along with one or two other things.

He leaned his head back against the tree, feeling the good irregularity of its texture behind him, and closed his eyes to feel the wind on his skin, to listen to the quiet.

There was a small scuffling sound: someone moving about. Blake opened his eyes lazily to see who it was (the sound was too small and scuffling to be the Cadet, so he could afford to be lazy about it), but against the small diffusion of light from the barracks window opposite him he could only see that the shape sitting beneath it, against the wall, was human. Which he could have guessed, anyway. He kept his eyes open, though: no harm in knowing who else was sneaking out of the barracks out of lights-out, and, maybe, why.

The tiny metallic click of a lighter and a quick flame answered the second question; the steadier glow of a cigarette answered the first, redly illuminating a patch of Seven's ascetic, absent face. The smoke, rising, caught the light from the window, giving the boy a glittering aura.

Blake kept watching, idly, as the cigarette end brightened and dulled with Seven's breath. He followed the pattern the little bright spot made in the air as Seven's fingers moved it away, brought it back to his lips; watched the flat tips of Seven's fingers against his mouth, watched his mouth gulping and sucking on the smoke.

Kept watching as the bright spot, moving downwards, lit a smaller and smaller, brighter and brighter, circle against Seven's forearm, then dimmed as it was held against his flesh. Listened: almost inaudibly, a little half-hurt inhalation, horribly near-sexual. Watched: the cigarette, in slightly trembling fingers, tapped and sucked to its brightest, then brought slowly back to the forearm.

Something in him responded to it. It made him feel wounded and angry all at once. He got up abruptly, shaking the feeling out of his body.

To get back into the barracks he had to pass very close to Seven, but the boy paid him no attention at all, which somehow piqued him; he turned back and squatted angrily down beside Seven, his face close to the other boy's, just as he was bringing the cigarette to his arm for the third or fourth time.

Seven jumped, badly, and pulled the cigarette away. His other hand went to his ear, pressing at it where it joined his head at the top, a gesture Blake had seen him perform once or twice before when startled.

"What's in your ear?" he asked, angrily. He didn't know quite what he'd been meaning to say, but it hadn't been that.

Seven blinked. "A musicplayer," he said.

"Can't be, it's too small," said Blake, peering.

"It is very small. I built it myself."

"Let me see."

Seven's fingers touched his as he handed the speck of metal over, and Blake shivered/flinched as if they had been as hot as the cigarette - on which Seven was taking a long, deep draw as Blake examined the player.

"Can I try it?"

Seven shrugged. Blake fitted it behind his ear and tapped at it, imitating Seven's gesture: and suddenly, disorientingly, the big quiet of the planet's surface, the small hum of the barracks' generator, disappeared into a weird electric noise of strings and voices. Blake yelped and pulled the player out.

"That's horrible! Why would you do that to yourself?"

Seven shrugged, wiped the player fastidiously, and put it back. "It's first calendar music," he said.

"Banned?"

Seven nodded indifferently.

"You're not going to have a good time here," Blake said. He wasn't sure why he said it, but he was sure it was true.

"Really," said Seven. He was looking away into the distance, his fingers twitching slightly to a rhythm Blake couldn't hear. Blake stood up, hesitated for a moment, then went back into the barracks.

****************

After-dinner rec hour. Blake and the others who weren't on punishment detail were playing cards and idly bitching about the food, the drill, the Cadet, the absent reparas and each other. The group had pretty much shaken down now, in a way Blake could live with: he'd managed to evade both Pakuan's devotion and Barrat's attempt to instal himself as partner-in-crime, without having to have another fight. Which was good, because he didn't enjoy fighting. Or rather, because he did.

The only one he didn't have a handle on was Seven.

"Oh, _Avon_ ," Chen was saying as she threw down a card, drew another from the deck: then, with a nervous glance at the camera, "Seven, I mean. Why do you care? He's just in a world of his own. "

"Away with the fairies," Mandt agreed. "And I do mean the fairies."

Laughter.

Blake grinned and laid down two twos.

"Shit," said Barrat briefly, picking up four.

"I didn't say I cared," Blake said carefully. "I said I didn't understand him." He thought, again, of the cigarette tip coming down on Avon's flesh and his breath came short for a moment, before his mind skidded away from the thought, again. It made this conversation feel strange, not mentioning what he'd seen, as if he and Avon had a secret from the others. But he didn't know if Avon knew they had a secret; he didn't know where he stood with Avon, and that was disconcerting.

"That little musicplayer of his," Blake said instead. "It keeps getting him in trouble - wouldn't you think it would be easier just to give up and live in the real world with the rest of us?"

"Oh, who _cares_ ," Chen said again. "If it makes him happy, leave him to it. Keeps him out of our way, anyway."

"Amen to that," said Margalo, throwing down six cards from his hand. "The more punishment detail he does, the less he's here card-sharking us."

**************

"I," said Siv, "am _fucking_ knackered." She flopped onto her back and, when she didn't get a reply, reached over to prod Marka, lying on the other bed.

"They fuck about and _I_ spend four hours supervising their bloody punishment detail," she went on. "Where's the justice?"

"Why don't you just leave 'em to it and put the cameras on them?" Marka didn't look up from her bookscreen.

"Hmm," said Siv, interested. "I suppose I could. Not every time, though," she added gloomily.

"Oh, it's a hard life in the Command," said Marka absently. "Watching civilian kids do calisthenics."

"Marka," said Siv, "what are you actually _doing_ for this special credit, anyway? Cos I'm starting to think Censec gives out credit for lying on my spare bed making cheeky remarks about the Command."

"Ha ha," said Marka.

"No, seriously. What are you doing?" Siv propped herself up on one elbow and craned her neck to see what was on the bookscreen, but Marka raised an infuriating eyebrow and blanked the screen.

" _Fine_." Siv flopped back down. " _Be_ secretive."

"Thanks," said Marka. "I will. Probably good practice, don't you think?"

Siv blew a raspberry at her, lazily.

**************

Another night, Blake hadn't been so lucky, and it was his turn - along with Avon, Barrat and Pakuan - to spend a few hours performing a difficult, tedious, and conspicuously futile physical task. Tonight they were running back and forth beside waist-high walls, along which they were rolling heavy, cumbersome, but otherwise rendered-harmless field artillery components. A skill which would no doubt come in very useful in all manner of ways back on Earth.

Blake reached the end of his wall and - impossibly - sped up to get round it and steady the artillery tube from the other side before it toppled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avon, running at the next wall along, beginning to stumble, beginning to push more haphazardly at his cylinder: he saw it bemusedly through his tiredness at first, then he quickened, his vision sharpening itself on the edge Avon was swaying on. If he didn't look out the cylinder would fall and it looked to Blake like a broken leg was the least he could expect to get out of it.

At least the cadet was actually watching them today. Unlike the cameras, she could be relied on to look the other way occasionally: now, for instance.

"Seven," Blake whispered. No reaction.

"Avon," he said urgently; " _Avon_!"

Avon looked round, blinked, recalled himself, looked back and saw the wobbling of the cylinder; his eyes flew wide open and Blake would have sworn he could hear him stop breathing, except that everything was drowned out by the Cadet's bellowing/shrieking. Her voice, which would probably have been quite pleasant in its natural calm, alto-tenor tones, pushed its way shatteringly through the air.

" _One! What did you just say?_ "

"Nothing. Nothing important, sir," said Blake, slowing to a halt and standing to attention. He saw Avon reach out clumsily to steady the cylinder and push it further off-balance, until at last he managed to retrieve it from what had looked like an irretrievable cant and steady it, halt it, balance it securely. The Cadet, who had covered the distance between them in about four improbable strides, reached them and started shrieking into Blake's face. Pakuan and Barrat had stopped running too, to watch.

"I'll be the judge of that, One! What did you say?"

"I said 'Avon', sir."

"Why was that?"

"To get his attention, sir."

"And what is his number?"

"Seven, sir."

"So you remember his number?"

"Yes, sir."

"And yet you still chose to call him by his... Hang on. _What_ did you call him, One?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Blake saw Avon's eyes widen in alarm.

"Avon, sir."

The Cadet's mouth fell open. " _Avon?_ "

No-one said anything.

"Seven? What's your name?"

"Kerr Avon, sir."

"You're not - You are. You're Brian Avon's brother, aren't you?"

"Yes," muttered Avon.

The Cadet's glee - unimaginatively and repetitively expressed at some length and, naturally, at Avon's expense - stayed with her, visibly, to the end of the detail, when she assigned Blake an extra half-hour of push-ups for using a civilian name.

****************

 _Forty-seven. Forty-eight._

"Blake." Blake glanced to his left and saw skinny legs, scruffy black shoes. Pausing at the top of his push-up, he craned his neck a little and made out, from below, Avon's big nose and choirboy mouth.

"You can stop now," Avon went on. His rusty voice was almost emotionless, maybe slightly pissed-off. "I've fixed the cameras. They're on a loop, they'll think you're here for the whole thirty."

 _Fifty-one.Fifty-two._

"Thanks," Avon added. He started to move away, then added, impatiently, "They can't see you. There's no point in - "

 _Fifty-three._

Blake looked back at the grass between his spread hands. "I want to see if I can," he said shortly.

 _Fifty-four._

 _Fifty-five._

The shoes left Blake's field of vision.

 _Fifty-six._

**********

When he'd finished he lay on his back. He was wet through - even his hair was drenched - and panting so hard that his ribs butterflied, his back arched and bucked, on every breath. He tipped his head back, gulping at the wide air, and felt the good pain of his exertion and the bad pain of his subjection fighting it out in his bones. _Why does it feel good to do what I'm told_?

When his breathing had slowed a little and he could feel his sweat cooling on him, the slight dampness of the grass cold against his naked neck, he sprawled flatter on the ground and closed his eyes to enjoy the absence of cameras for a little while.

"Are you all right?"

Blake opened his eyes. Avon was back, kneeling beside him, looking intently down, his face close to Blake's own: to Blake's eyes, still adjusting to the light, the pattern of pale skin/dark shadows was oddly abstract for a moment, oddly significant, like a Rorschach blot or a hieroglyph in an untranslated language.

"Blake?"

Avon's face was so close that Blake had only one option. So he punched it, knocking Avon down, scrambled to his feet, and stalked away before Avon could get up.

He knew exactly why he'd done it, of course, and that made him feel worse. He walked hard and blindly back towards the barracks, self-hatred and adrenaline powering his wiped-out muscles, and almost didn't hear Barrat falling in beside him.

"Quite right too, mate," Barrat said approvingly. "He had it coming."

Blake barely turned his head.

"Fuck off, Barrat, you wanker, before I knock you down too. Again," he added.

Barrat stopped in his tracks. "I'd like to see you try."

"You already have," Blake began, but then he suddenly stopped being able to be even slightly bothered. He stopped listening to Barrat and walked off.

****************

"Brian Avon's brother," Siv said joyfully, almost awed, pulling her shirt off over her head. "Brian Avon's brother on repara. Oh, it almost makes me wish I'd bothered to read the roster when they arrived. Oh, just wait till next term... Brian Avon's brother," she repeated. "Hey, I looked up what he's in for and you won't - Marka, what are you doing?"

Marka looked up. "Painting my toenails," she said. She wiggled her toes at Siv. "What do you think?"

"They look ridiculous. Why on earth would you do that?"

Marka shrugged. "Dunno. It's the fashion over in Censec: old-school girly."

"Well, I suppose you have the energy for it over there." Siv thumbed her knickers down, let them fall off, stepped out of them, wiped a stray drop of sweat off her forehead, and went into the shower.

"Oh yeah." Marka raised her voice slightly so Siv could hear her. "Easy life, Censec training."

"It fucking is as well. Look at you, painting your toenails without so much as raising an honest sweat. Is that the sort of thing they teach you over at Censec? No wonder you get all those privileges."

"Ah, you're just jealous," said Marka. "Only one in five hundred gets plucked for Censec, you know."

"Plucked is right," said Siv as if reflexively. "Fucking _hell_ , though," she added, "Brian Avon's brother. I deserved _something_ to make up for this summer, but I didn't think it would be this good. Oh, next term, next term..."

Marka sighed and rolled her eyes, though Siv couldn't see her, and said with patience heavy in her voice: "Siv, who is Brian Avon?"

"Oh," said Siv, strolling out of the shower and shaking her wet hair vigorously. "Prefect over in Samor house. Got a little following. Thinks it makes him somebody."

"Threat to the Holland-Tarrant empire, eh?"

" _No_ ," said Siv, contempt stretching the word out to three syllables. "He wishes. Anyway, you never guessed what his brother's in for."

"And why do you think that might be?" Marka capped the bottle of nail paint and stretched out on the bed, wiggling her toes to help them dry.

Siv made a face at her as her head emerged from a clean pullover top. "Listening to banned music. Isn't that _pathetic_? He was going to one of those basement clubs in the Domes with a load of other little culture-lovers. Betas, mostly. And you should see him, Marka, he's all bones and nose and nerves. Pretty."

"I bet he's having the time of his life," said Marka. "What number is he?"

"Seven, the little shortarse," said Siv happily.

Marka tapped her left little toenail with the back of one finger to test it, then rolled onto her stomach and pulled her writer towards her off the shelf by the bed. "I should get on," she announced.

WEEK FOUR

"Doing all right there, Marka?" Siv shouted cheerfully down from the hillock where she was standing, waiting for the rest to catch up.

"Fine, thanks," said Marka, who looked hot and irritable. Siv was about to shout something else at her - ask how her toenail paint was holding up now she was back in combat boots, perhaps - but she remembered in time that she shouldn't undermine a fellow quote-officer-unquote in front of the quote-men-unquote, and didn't say anything.

She was in a fantastic mood. The sun was shining vigorously, and despite having spent three-and-a-half weeks nursing a bunch of civilians through baby exercises, she seemed still to be pretty fit; it felt great to be striding across open terrain, outside the predictable Academy training grounds and sim programs; and if she kept her eyes, ears and brain half-shut she could pretend that the group of kids trailing along to catch up to her were real soldiers and she was a real commander, on a real assignment instead of a half-arsed group capture-the-flag manoeuvre.

They'd come a long way from where they started, at least, she thought, watching them striding and straggling up the hill: a few of them, with a couple of years intensive training, might even be good enough to apply to the Academy. She grinned. Maybe Deeta had been right after all and she should give the Man some credit: this felt pretty good.

**************

"Got him!" said Avon with quiet, ferocious satisfaction as Barrat reached the line of dummy mines they'd set up. Blake glanced at Avon briefly, settled back down on the floor, and watched through the narrow window as Barrat raised a foot, put it down, and exploded up and back, flying forty feet through the blood-misted ruin of his leg. A couple of people screamed, a couple shouted, and the Cadet's voice, in the tenor range, said "Oh, _fuck_." She was up and running before Barrat had landed.

Blake, who had been deafened by the noise, looked around. Everything was shiny and sharp, as if the air were a magnifying, hi-resolution, lens, and the other five people in the bunker looked identically horrified, in a - shockingly - rather funny way.

************

Siv looked up from where she was kneeling on the red grass beside Ten, seeing Marka's shadow fall over her left shoulder.

"About time," she said, almost listlessly. "He's definitely dead."

"I'm not surprised."

"I don't know if he's beyond reviving," she went on. "Even if we get him back, though, that leg's gone. I mean, _gone_." Then her voice took on a little of its usual colour as she said: "Shit, Marka, this is bad. This is very bad. I've killed a fucking civilian."

Marka looked at her. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know. Shit. I don't fucking know. I've killed a civilian _child_. This is the end of my fucking career. I mean - this is the _end_. Fucking... Maybe I'll just run for it."

She glanced towards the forest. Marka watched her take a few deep breaths in silence, staring into the darkness between the trees: then she looked up and grinned viciously.

"Fuck it," Siv said. "Get the rest of the kids together, will you? Keep an eye on them."

**********

Silence in the odd-numbered bunker, a silence heavy enough to drown out any noise from beyond the concrete walls: they watched the little figures of Marka and Siv, one standing, one kneeling, looking like figures on a teleplay, except that the same mist, the same smell of explosive and blood, hung in their air and in the bunker.

Margalo broke the quiet: "Is he dead?"

"Looks like it," said Blake and turned away.

"Fuck this," said Mandt, his voice and body trembling. "Hear me? Fuck this. This isn't in the rules. No-one agreed to this."

"No," said Avon, thoughtfully. Blake looked at him, wondering.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"No-one agreed to this," Avon repeated. "She's fucked it up."

"Fucked it _up_?" Mandt yelled, grabbing Avon by the collar. "She's fucking _killed Barrat! I'd_ say she'd fucked it up!"

"Leave him alone," said Blake absent-mindedly, flicking at Mandt's arm to get him to let go. His eyes met Avon's.

"Let's go home," said Avon quietly.

*************

Siv was pretending it was a training exercise by now, which was helping slightly, though it didn't make the time pass any faster. She was sitting by Ten's body - which, following the instructions the comfortingly unflappable school secretary, Bev, had given her, she hadn't moved - clutching her comm mouthpiece and waiting for the flyer to come in. Every thirty seconds or so she glanced at her chron, expecting five minutes to have passed. She did not look at the body, and was gradually becoming accustomed to the smell of blood coming from it.

*************

"No," said Blake immediately, without thinking.

"Why not?" asked Mandt excitedly and " _Why not_?" spat Avon venomously.

"We could," added Szara, forgetting to cry, staring round at the others. "Could we?"

"Of course we could," said Avon. "We could be at the spaceport in an hour. Our exit visas will be on the system and I can make sure we have enough credits. They can't make us come back, not now they've killed him: they can't touch us. We can go home. Now."

Margalo didn't say anything. He was watching the cadet sitting by Barrat and rubbing his fingers nervously together.

"No," Blake repeated in his coldest voice. He was talking only to Avon. Avon shrugged and looked away, breaking eye contact.

"You're a fool," he said quietly, viciously.

Blake drew a breath, stepping off the high-and-dizzy tightrope that stretched between him and Avon, returning himself to the earth, to the bunker where the other three were staring at him. Earthbound, feeling faintly bitter, faintly disappointed, he began to speak; he knew that they would do as he said.

************

Siv watched the flyer getting smaller in the air, averted her eyes from the darkening patch of red on the ground, took a deep breath and glanced over to the even-numbered bunker where Marka had herded all the reparas. They were standing in a tense and ragged semi-circle, radiating anger inwards, towards Marka, radiating fear outwards, towards the forest. The pink girl's high, loud voice carried towards her, demanding a lawyer, demanding a comm, and fuck knew what nonsense.

Well: this, at least, she knew what to do about.

She squared her shoulders, and strode over to the fraying, frightened horseshoe, listening to her voice shout: "Right, you lot! _Straight_ lines! Get to attention _now_ , you sorry-arsed bunch of girls!"

***********

"You blew it," Avon said to him as they filed quietly back into the barracks.

"Quiet there, Seven," said the Cadet, but mechanically, as if her heart wasn't in it. Blake didn't say anything, but he didn't go into the barracks, either.

"Get inside, One."

"No, sir," he said. "I want to see the Colonel."

"I said, get inside."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, sir. I want to see the Colonel. Now."

Marka touched the Cadet on the arm and said something quietly to her, below Blake's range of hearing. The Cadet listened, nodded, listened, nodded again.

"All right," she said listlessly, turning back to Blake. "You can come with us and wait while we give our report. Then you can talk to him."

Blake nodded briefly and followed the two girls across the grass to the main school building.

************

There were three of them in front of the Colonel: Siv, Marka, and Blake. Standing equally straight, in a little straight line, one, two, three.

"Well," said Berjeral, looking them in the eye one at a time, one, two, three. "You'd better say what you have to say, One - or, Roj Blake, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," said Blake, hesitated, then began strongly. "I want your assurance that, following this - " _incident?_ \- "murder, these cadets will be expelled the Service and you will have an independent inquiry into reparative service protocols."

"Murder is a very serious allegation, young man," said Berjeral. "I assume you have some proof that the death of your friend was intended by my cadets?"

"No, sir. I withdraw the allegation. Following this _very serious negligence_ ," he amended, making it clear with the delicacy of his tone that whatever words he used, whatever the euphemism, what he meant was _murder_. "Barrat is just as dead," he couldn't help adding. "He stole a few credits' worth of junk. He _wanted_ to do repara, he thought it would be a back door into the Command, he failed the exam... He stole some corporate's crappy little toy, and now he's dead. Fourteen years old and dead. Someone has to pay for that."

He closed his mouth, abruptly, and clenched his fists, before he started to scream or to hit out. He couldn't afford that, not now. He thought of ice, of rock, of the power of immobility. He thought of Avon's silence.

Berjeral was nodding. "Very heartfelt," he said, "very commendable. As for expelling my cadets, young man, have you any complaint to make about Holland's handling of the affair?"

Blake stared at him. "She got a fourteen-year-old boy killed," he said.

"Yes, yes, but after that?"

"After that? No," Blake said in disbelief. "No complaint."

Berjeral's face quaked and broke into a smile. "I thought not," he said proudly. "Congratulations, Cadet Holland."

"Congratulations, sir?" said Holland miserably.

"Congratulations," Berjeral repeated. "You handled yourself with commendable maturity and fortitude under extreme - if simulated - conditions." He looked at Marka and Blake wasn't sure if he saw them exchange a wink.

"Simulated," Holland repeated.

"It wasn't real," Blake heard himself saying, his voice loud. "Barrat's not dead."

"No," said Berjeral, beaming. "You needn't worry about that, young man. I'm afraid the whole incident was engineered for Holland's benefit - and very well you did too, my dear. I shall be proud to recommend you to serve beside your friend here on assignment next year."

"Assignment?" Holland almost-whispered it, staring in disbelief into the Colonel's face. "Oh - " Her voice strengthened. "Thank you, Colonel. Thank you, sir. I won't let you down."

"No," he agreed. "I don't think you will. Dismissed, Cadets, Blake." He turned away from them to fiddle with some controls on the wall by his comm-screen.

*********

As soon as they got out of the Colonel's office and she could be reasonably sure that Blake was out of sight and earshot, Siv squealed and punched Marka in the arm, hard, at the same time. It seemed the only way she could express her huge and multiple feelings.

"Ow," said Marka crossly, rubbing her arm. "What was that for, you bloody thug?"

"I can't believe you didn't tell me," said Siv. "You sly bitch. Oh, I can't _believe_ I'm going on assignment next year!" She squealed again as she grabbed Marka's hands and swung her round in the corridor. Marka suffered this patiently.

"Was that what your secret thing was all along?" Siv demanded, dropping Marka's hands. "Was it, you sly cow?"

Marka nodded. "Sort of. I had to write on some psychomanipulative aspect of military training - "

Siv made a face of disgust. "I keep telling you, there's no psycho about it. You just make 'em run round till they're tired enough to do what they're told."

"Well, exactly," said Marka calmly. "I wanted to see how well repara worked, whether they'd still recognize your authority once something went really wrong."

"Course they would," said Siv. "I've got natural authority. And a big shouty voice," she added. "And a gun. That helps too."

Marka grinned at her. "And a very effective system of training. Luckily Censec has a big enough budget for me to get the android, and it's not like it had to do anything very complicated, is it?"

"Complicated enough for my liking," said Siv with feeling.

"Oh no, not really," said Marka. "All we had to do was rig it with an explosive so that when it reached - "

"Yeah, yeah, very clever, very sneaky... I can't believe you didn't _tell_ me, though."

They'd reached their room now, and as they went through the door Marka explained: "I would have done, but Berjeral decided he wanted to use the situation as a test, to see if one of _his_ cadets could make the grade with someone from Censec, go on assignment a year early. He picked you months ago."

Siv swelled and hugged Marka. "I still can't believe it! It's going to be so great - but when we're on assignment you'd better not keep all these secrets from me, you hear me?"

"I promise," said Marka, smiling.

Siv dropped onto the bed and propped her hands under her head, staring at the ceiling. "Oh, that Berjeral, he's a great man. No wonder he's the Head. I _thought_ he was being too harsh on me. It didn't seem like him, you know. I should have known there was something going on. I should have listened to Deeta, I should have known I could trust the Man."

"And me," said Marka.

Siv grinned. "And you."

They shook hands.

**********

"Barrat, you complete _bastard_!" Mandt was in great high spirits. Everyone was in great high spirits. Verging, perhaps, on hysteria, Blake thought indifferently. He sat on the end of his bunk, staring at the seven people crowding round Barrat to punch and hug and touch and ruffle his hair.

"I can't believe you didn't tell _me_ ," Chen said. She was pouting slightly. "I wouldn't have told anyone."

Barrat grinned round at everyone, in a state of high excitement. "You bunch of gullible bastards!" he shouted. "You all fell for it!" he shouted. "They've told me I can reapply for the Academy," he added, "did I tell you? Next year."

Blake sat and stared at them. _As long as someone was in charge of it_ , he thought. _That's all it took for them to accept it. Just so long as someone in authority planned it, told them it was being taken care of,_ they _were being taken care of, everything's just fine. It's unbelievable_ , he thought.

Because the fact that Barrat was alive didn't make it any better; it made it worse. Because Barrat _had_ been dead, if only for a couple of hours: the death of a fourteen-year-old boy who had stolen a vizplayer from a stranger on a tram _had_ been used in a training exercise for two teenage soldiers. Because they had first used a child's death and then destroyed even the memory of it, made his blood vanish from their hands.

 _But then_ \- he stared down at his fingers, watching them pick a hole in the knee of his trousers. _In that case. It's not a question of taking what I want and paying for it. It never has been. Because_ they _don't pay, and they can make_ us _pay more than we should have to_.

Out of that sudden weightlessness, that void, he looked up and met Avon's eyes. From across the barracks, and through the exhaustion in Blake's eyes, his face was blurred into a Rorschach blot again, and for a moment Blake thought of getting up, walking across the barracks, kissing him, taking what he'd wanted - what he could have had, all along.

Avon shifted slightly. The moment was gone, had been gone since Blake had punched him - at least since then. Wasted. So much of his life, wasted and not real - deleted, made unreal, like Barrat's death: nothing but a fraud in the service of a bankrupt system. And that, he realized, was something he _was_ going to have to pay for. Not taking what he wanted.

Blake started to laugh. Then he stopped laughing, got up from his bed and started to pack. He looked at nothing but his clothes as they passed from shelf to case through the machine-movements of his hands.

He was already planning what would come next.

THE END


End file.
